But The Explorers
Soon Found That Although The Pirogue Was To Be Left Behind,
The Way Was Too Difficult For A Portage Even For Canoes.
The Journal Says:
-
"We found great difficulty and some danger in even ascending
the creek thus far, in consequence of the rapids and rocks
of the channel of the creek, which just above where we brought
the canoes has a fall of five feet, with high steep bluffs beyond it.
We were very fortunate in finding, just below Portage Creek,
a cottonwood tree about twenty-two inches in diameter, large enough
to make the carriage-wheels. It was, perhaps, the only one of the same
size within twenty miles; and the cottonwood which we are obliged
to employ in the other parts of the work is extremely soft and brittle.
The mast of the white pirogue, which we mean to leave behind,
supplied us with two axle-trees.
"There are vast quantities of buffalo feeding on the plains or watering
in the river, which is also strewed with the floating carcasses and limbs
of these animals. They go in large herds to water about the falls,
and as all the passages to the river near that place are narrow and steep,
the foremost are pressed into the river by the impatience of those behind.
In this way we have seen ten or a dozen disappear over the falls in a
few minutes. They afford excellent food for the wolves, bears, and birds
of prey; which circumstance may account for the reluctance of the bears
to yield their dominion over the neighborhood.
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